29 September 2012

Autumn garden chores, leaf-peeping, football games, family activities, financial matters, house repairs, noncomputer hobbies, books to read, and blogging burnout are all coming together to take me away from TYWKIWDBI for a while.

Those who feel bereft are reminded that it is possible to browse the archives of this blog by modifying and pasting this url -

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

- to a month before you became a regular reader (choose year/month back to 2008) (or go to "archive" in the right sidebar).

I am always surprised to see some people demanding the time of others
and meeting a most obliging response. Both sides have in view the reason
for which the time is asked and neither regards the time itself—as if
nothing is being asked for and nothing given. They are trifling with
life’s most precious commodity, being deceived because it is an
intangible thing, not open to inspection and therefore reckoned very
cheap—in fact, almost without any value...

No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to
yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take and will neither
reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you
of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a
king’s command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day,
so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the
outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile
death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available
for that.

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their
foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to
improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives.
They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting
things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it
comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest
obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses
today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning
what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you
straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately... And even if
you do grasp it, it will still flee. So you must match time’s swiftness
with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a
rapid stream that will not always flow.

We bought several ears at a local farm. I don't think it tastes any better than commercial mass-market popcorn-in-a-bag, but it's more fun to microwave, and I think would be more interesting for small children.

Some of them have been renting their name and official seal to debt-collecting companies, as explained in a NYT article:

The letters are sent by the thousands to people across the country who
have written bad checks, threatening them with jail if they do not pay
up.

They bear the seal and signature of the local district attorney’s
office. But there is a catch: the letters are from debt-collection
companies, which the prosecutors allow to use their letterhead. In
return, the companies try to collect not only the unpaid check, but also
high fees from debtors for a class on budgeting and financial
responsibility, some of which goes back to the district attorneys’
offices...

Debt collectors have come under fire for illegally menacing people
behind on their bills with threats of jail. What makes this approach
unusual is that the ultimatum comes with the imprimatur of law
enforcement itself — though it is made before any prosecutor has
determined a crime has been committed...

Prosecutors say that the partnerships allow them to focus on more
serious crimes, and that the letters are sent only to check writers who
ignore merchants’ demands for payment. The district attorneys receive a
payment from the firms or a small part of the fees collected...

Even after Ms. Yartz paid $100.05 in February to cover the bounced
check, the returned item fee and an administration fee, she got a letter
signed by the Alameda district attorney informing her that her
remaining balance was $180 for the class. After consulting with a
lawyer, she decided to take her chances rather than pay for a class she
could not afford, to avoid being punished for a crime she said she did
not commit. Ms. Yartz also questioned the need for a class on budgeting
and financial accountability: “If I meant to bounce this check like a
criminal, why do I need a class on budgeting?”

24 September 2012

First, some excerpts from Wikipedia about the historical/mythological Rhiannon:

Rhiannon is a prominent figure in Welsh mythology, mother to the Demetian hero Pryderi and wife to Pwyll... Upon ascending the magical mound of Gorsedd Arberth, the Demetian king Pwyll witnesses the arrival of Rhiannon, appearing to them as a beautiful woman dressed in gold silk brocade and riding a shining white horse...

Under the advice of his noblemen, Pwyll and Rhiannon attempt to supply an heir to the kingdom and eventually a boy is born. However, on the night of his birth, he disappears while in the care of six of Rhiannon's ladies-in-waiting. To avoid the king's wrath, the ladies smear dog's blood onto a sleeping Rhiannon, claiming that she had committed infanticide and cannibalism through eating and "destroying" her child. Rhiannon is forced to do penance for her crime...

The Mabinogi do not present Rhiannon as anything other than human. Scholars of mythology have nevertheless speculated that Rhiannon may euhemerize* an earlier goddess of Celtic polytheism. Similar euhemerisms of pre-Christian deities can be found in other medieval Celtic literature, when Christian scribes and redactors may have felt uncomfortable writing about the powers of pagan gods...

According to Miranda Jane Green, "Rhiannon conforms to two archetypes of myth - a gracious, bountiful queen-goddess; and as the 'wronged wife', falsely accused of killing her son."

Nicks discovered Rhiannon through a novel called Triad, by Mary
Leader. The novel is about a woman named Branwen, who is possessed by
another woman named Rhiannon. There is mention of the Welsh legend of Rhiannon in the novel, but the characters in the novel bear little resemblance to their original Welsh namesakes... Nicks bought the novel in an airport just before a long flight and
thought the name was so pretty that she wanted to write something about a
girl named Rhiannon... After writing the song, Nicks learned that Rhiannon originated from a Welsh goddess, and was amazed that the haunting song lyrics applied to the Welsh Rhiannon as well.... Nicks avoided wearing black clothing for "about two years" in an effort
to distance herself from the witchcraft and dark arts associations
surrounding her as a result of the lyrics to "Rhiannon" giving fans the
wrong impression.

Adnan Latif was found dead in his cell on September 10, 2012, just a day
before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. He was 32. Latif, a Yemeni
citizen, had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, despite a
2010 court ruling that ordered the Obama administration to “take all
necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif’s release forthwith,” due to lack of evidence that he had committed any crime...

A car accident in 1994 left Latif with a head injury, which he was
attempting to get treated in Afghanistan when he was captured near the
border by Pakistani authorities. In January, 2002, he was sent to
Guantanamo, with the unfortunate distinction of being one of the first
detainees. According to the ACLU, Latif
was cleared to be released in 2004, 2007, 2009, and again in 2010 by US
District Court Judge Henry Kennedy. The Obama DOJ appealed the 2010
decision, in part because of a policy of not transferring detainees to
Yemen, and so Latif remained in custody – not because of what he had
done (which was nothing), but because of where he was born. The decision
to appeal his release wasn’t a holdover from the Bush era. That was an
affirmative decision made by the Obama administration, and any
supporters who hoped Obama would close Guantanamo Bay should understand
that fact.

He is the ninth person to die at the camp since it was opened more than ten years ago. As former Gitmo guard Brandon Neely pointed out Monday, more detainees have died at the camp (nine) than have been convicted of wrongdoing by its military commissions (six)...

... a camp spokesman acknowledged that he "had not been charged and had not
been designated for prosecution". In other words, he has been kept by
the US government in a cage for many years without any opportunity to
contest the accusations against him, and had no hope of leaving the camp
except by death...

Put another way, even if Congress had given Obama everything he wanted,
the system that means that death is the only way out for many detainees
would have been fully preserved. The excuse-making for Obama – "oh, he tried to close the camp but Congress would not let him" – is simply a deceitful tactic Democrats
have concocted to justify their total silence about a grave injustice
they once pretended to find so appalling and their raucous swooning for a
president who supports it.

Last week I had a long conversation, with a friend I've known since childhood, about indefinite detention without trial of Guantanamo prisoners. I told him I found the practice outrageous and reprehensible. His reply was that the situation is different when you're dealing with terrorists rather than ordinary criminals, and that bringing these men to trial might reveal and jeopardize the sources of information that led to their apprehension, thereby endangering our country's security.

I remain unconvinced. In my view indefinite confinement without trial is equivalent to a nonjudicial declaration of guilt, and is a violation of basic human rights that apply as much to a terrorist as to any other human being. If some reader here can give me a well-reasoned justification for the actions of the Obama administration, I'd appreciate it.

Two of the internet's iconic and pioneering blogs - The Presurfer and Everlasting Blört [with an umlaut] are celebrating their 12th birthdays today. I have followed both of them since long before I began TYWKIWDBI, and my blogging style has undoubtedly been influenced by them.

22 September 2012

We knew Clara loved the Coppélia ballet, but little did we know she
memorized the whole thing! She performed this solely from memory!

This
is just a small snippet of her dancing to it. We would see her doing
some ballet moves around the house thinking it was ballet moves she
learned in ballet class, till one day someone decided to whip out a
computer and compare her moves to that of the Coppélia ballerina, and,
VOILA, we realized she memorized it, and can dance it!

Clara has
been diagnosed with DiGeorge Syndrome and Autism. She spent her first
16 months in hospital, has gone through multiple surgeries since she was
two weeks due to the complications with her syndrome. Before she was
two, we noticed that she had difficulty connecting with people, was in a
world of her own, and two years later she was also diagnosed with
autism. Clara also had a lot of physical complications, and could not
walk till she was four. She never spoke until she was six...

... a syndrome caused by the deletion of a small piece of chromosome 22...

... affects between 1 in 2000 and 1 in 4000 live births.
This estimate is based on major birth defects and may be an
underestimate, because some individuals with the deletion have few
symptoms and may not have been formally diagnosed...

Characteristic signs and symptoms may include birth defects such as
congenital heart disease, defects in the palate, most commonly related
to neuromuscular problems with closure (velo-pharyngeal insufficiency), learning disabilities, mild differences in facial features, and recurrent infections.

Coppélia is a comic ballet originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles Nuitter... based upon two stories by ETA Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman), and Die Puppe (The Doll). Coppéliapremiered on 25 May 1870 at the Théâtre Impérial de l´Opéra, with the 16-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi in the principal role of Swanhilde...

Coppélia concerns an inventor, Dr Coppelius, who has made a life-size dancing doll.
It is so lifelike that Franz, a village swain, becomes infatuated with
it and sets aside his true heart's desire, Swanhilde. She shows him his
folly by dressing as the doll, pretending to make it come to life and
ultimately saving him from an untimely end at the hands of the inventor.

Everyone knows that "1234" is an overused 4-digit PIN (the three most commonly used numbers account for almost 20% of all passwords). Some excerpts from a Slate column:

On the other end of the scale, the least popular
combination—8068—appears less than 0.001 percent of the time... Rounding out the bottom
five are "8093," "9629," "6835," and "7637," which all nearly as rare...

Data Genetics came up with the numbers by analyzing a database of 3.4
million stolen passwords that have been made public over the years. Most
of these are passwords for websites...

Among seven-digit passwords, the fourth-most popular is "8675309," which should ring familiar to fans of '80s music.

Created at Florida International University’s International Hurricane Research Center, the "Wall of Wind" can create sustained winds of 157 MPH. It's used for testing structural integrity of building materials and techniques.

“Bath salts” are nothing like the epsom salts often added to bathwater;
it's just the most common code name given to a specific type of
synthetic drugs made in underground labs and marketed as household
items. The drugs have been camouflaged as plant food, stain remover,
toilet bowl cleaner and hookah cleaner. They've been sold online and in
"head shops," businesses that sell drug paraphernalia. The boxes usually
contain a foil wrap or plastic bag of powder, though sometimes they
take the form of pills or capsules. The color of the powder ranges from
white to yellow to brown, the price from $30 to $50. And nearly every
box has a label that says “not for human consumption.”...

Early on, doctors began noticing something else that was strange.
Compared with other drugs, bath salts didn't follow a normal
dose-response pattern. With cocaine or methamphetamine, the drug entered
the bloodstream, and, within hours, began to wear off. Not so for bath
salts...

In the 1970s, a medicinal chemist named Richard A. Glennon
was studying what it would take to convert a stimulant drug to a
hallucinogen and vice versa... By
introducing an oxygen atom to the side chain of amphetamine, he created
something called a beta-keto amphetamine. Beta-keto amphetamine was what
we now call cathinone, and at the time, in the U.S., it was a new class
of stimulant...

Methamphetamine, amphetamine and cocaine all produce excessive dopamine
in the space between two neurons -- the synapse -- but through different
mechanisms. Both amphetamine and methamphetamine primarily work by
causing an abnormal amount of dopamine to surge forth from the nerve
cells, shifting the brain's reward pathways into overdrive. Cocaine on
the other hand is what's called a reuptake inhibitor. That means it acts
like a stopper in a kitchen sink, blocking the retreat, or reuptake, of
dopamine back into the cell. It's this excessive dopamine, which goes
on to stimulate the next neuron, which causes a dizzying rush of energy
and a fierce, sometimes euphoric high...

Taking bath salts, it seemed, was similar to taking amphetamine and
cocaine at the same time. Except for one thing: MDPV is as much as 10
times stronger than cocaine...

Authorities like Ryan have
also noticed another trend -- one possibly as dangerous as the drugs
themselves: they're changing. In Louisiana for example, after the five
common bath salts ingredients were banned, the products didn't
disappear, they just evolved. As soon as the drugs were declared
illegal, drugmakers began finding new ways to get around the law by
making slight tweaks to the formula, creating substances that don't show
up on drug tests while skirting the law...

“There's no consistency to
what's in the package,” Ryan continued. “We tested packages for how much
MDPV was in them. One of them only contained 17 milligrams. One
contained 2,000 milligrams.” It explained why one person
might have a mild reaction to the drug, while another would end up in
the psych ward or counting imaginary police cars outside their window.

Much more at the link, which also has a long comment thread. Via BoingBoing.

Evidence of prehistoric dentistry has been limited to a few cases, the
most ancient dating back to the Neolithic. Here we report a
6500-year-old human mandible from Slovenia whose left canine crown bears
the traces of a filling with beeswax. The use of different analytical
techniques, including synchrotron radiation computed micro-tomography
(micro-CT), Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating,
Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), has
shown that the exposed area of dentine resulting from occlusal wear and
the upper part of a vertical crack affecting enamel and dentin tissues
were filled with beeswax shortly before or after the individual’s death.
If the filling was done when the person was still alive, the
intervention was likely aimed to relieve tooth sensitivity derived from
either exposed dentine and/or the pain resulting from chewing on a
cracked tooth: this would provide the earliest known direct evidence of
therapeutic-palliative dental filling.

21 September 2012

This video has been featured widely on the internet. I'm going to repost it here because it struck a chord with me on a very personal level, which I'll explain at the end.

This is a remix; the original video (which you can view here) shows an 8th-grade girl named Alexis participating in her first school track event. The YouTube poster comments "This video is 6yrs old. Alexis did run the hurdles again and didn't fail. She did give me permission to post the video and all of her friends have seen it, while they do find it funny they do support her and her courage."

The remix adds the audio of the Scala and Kolacny Brothers' version of Radiohead's "Creep."

One can debate whether the lyrics for Radiohead's "Creep" are totally appropriate for the hurdles video, but the rendition by this girls choir is so beautifully executed, and some phrases are so perfect that the remix really "works" for me. The original hurdles video was time-stretched to match the audio, and the resultant slo-motion effect is quite dramatic.

I've reviewed the comments about the video at 3-4 different websites. Not surprisingly perhaps, given the shallowness of many websurfers, the dominant theme is that this is a "fail" video. That the girl is a loser, that she missed a hurdle, that her coaching was dreadful, that this is the funniest LOLs video they've ever seen.

I have a different viewpoint. And for that I need to tell a story. In 1952 I contracted polio; after recovering I was left with some residual atrophy of my right quad, so I could ambulate, but couldn't run very fast. I attended a school where participation in sports was mandatory all three seasons of the school year. In the spring the school also held an all-school track day in which everyone was required to participate in several events. I was entered in the discus and the 220 yard run. For the latter event I can still remember being in the back stretch when the leaders were crossing the finish. By the time I got to the finish line they were setting up for the next heat.

When I crossed that finish line, the school's track coach came over to me. Mr. Bettels was a man who knew what impairment was. He had what I think in retrospect was severe kyphoscoliosis, but he was an inspirational coach and classroom teacher. He came to me and very quietly and privately congratulated me on finishing the race. I hadn't viewed my circling of the track as anything heroic; I was just doing what was expected. He viewed it a bit differently, and it took me some time to fully appreciate the import of his commendation. In the decades since then I've won a variety of non-athletic honors and have a smattering of trophies and plaques, but those words from Coach are one of the treasured memories of my youth.

So... I offer my congratulations to young Alexis. I don't find the video to be funny at all - it's inspirational, and it choked me up to watch it. It's also a good reminder that every day there are children whose bravery and courage goes unrecognized. We all need to take moments now and then to commend the "losers."

Reposted from 2010 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Radiohead's initial release of this, their debut song.

Every day, one-third of the people of Copenhagen ride their bikes to
work or school. Collectively, they cycle more than 750,000 miles daily,
enough to make it to the moon and back. And city officials want even
more people to commute, and over longer distances.

So
a network of 26 new bike routes, dubbed "the cycling superhighway," is
being built to link the surrounding suburbs to Copenhagen...

One of the first things you learn about these bike lanes is that you
have to move in fast. This is not leisurely biking — this is serious
stuff in Copenhagen... Each mile of bike highway will cost about $1 million. The project is to
be financed by the city of Copenhagen and 21 local governments. And in a
country where both right- and left-leaning politicians regularly ride
bikes to work, it has bilateral support...

Several innovations are being tested, like "green wave" technology,
which times traffic lights to suit bikers. If you maintain a certain
pace, you can ride all the way through into the city without stopping.
There are also footrests with bars to lean on at traffic lights, and a
bike pump every mile in case you have a flat...

Once the highway network is completed, an estimated 15,000 additional
people will switch from driving to biking. And that, say officials, will
have a direct impact on the environment, public health and finances.

Across the UK, six chocolate bars will have a GPS chip hidden inside the
wrapper; when the wrapper is taken off the bar, it will activate the
chip, so that Nestlé can track down the winner within 24 hours and hand
them a cheque for £10,000. The chips will be hidden in the wrappers of
KitKat 4 Finger, KitKat Chunky, Aero Peppermint Medium and Yorkie Milk
chocolate bars.

The claim is made in a new biography, to be published on Monday, by Prof Nicholas Roe, chair of the Keats Foundation and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Roe admits his finding will be contentious. "This has never been said before: Keats as an opium addict is new."...

Roe maintains that Keats, a trained physician, gained access to laudanum
in the autumn of 1818 while administering the drug to his brother. Tom was dying of TB, the disease he gave to Keats and of which the
poet died three years later. Opium was the only painkiller that could
alleviate the young man's pain.

After his brother's death, Keats
began taking the drug regularly "to keep up his spirits", as Brown said
later. Brown warned him of the "danger of such a habit". This, said Roe,
"suggests Keats was indeed an 'habitual' user of opium and had been
dosing himself for a considerable time."...

"When Keats writes in Ode to a Nightingale of having 'emptied some
dull opiate to the drains' he means – very precisely – downing a
decanter of laudanum," he said.

"Like Coleridge's Kubla Khan and
like Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Ode to a
Nightingale is one of the greatest re-creations of a drug-inspired
dream-vision in English literature – a poem that frankly admits his own
opium habit."

Ode on Indolence, added Roe: "grew out of a reverie
induced by taking laudanum to ease the pain of a black eye, got while
playing cricket on Hampstead Heath in March 1819".

This is, on the surface, a "simple" video, presenting in visual form some of the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey documenting the number and location of celestial objects.

It's "simple" until you realize - and personally I still have difficulty wrapping my mind around this - that those white specks you are "flying past" are not stars. Each of those is a galaxy composed of billions of stars.

The movie starts by flying right through a large nearby cluster of galaxies
and later circles the SDSS-captured universe at about 2 billion light years
(a redshift of about 0.15) from Earth...

These actions, by the Ansar Eddine, are a form of cultural genocide and can only be viewed by the enlightened world as the behavior of human scum.

[The region] is being plunged back in time. At its core is Timbuktu, an ancient
city that’s bearing the brunt of grinding social devastation. Intent on
achieving its own form of Year Zero, the militia announced that it will
enforce the stoning of adulterers, as well as the punitive mutilation of
thieves and the veiling of all women. And
that’s just the start. The city’s historic monuments and shrines are
being leveled, its cultural heritage being ripped to pieces, all this as
the traumatized population flees. There’s
not enough in the way of food, water, or basic medicine, and most
vestiges of modern society are being targeted. Soccer, recorded popular
music, television, and even videogames have been on the militia’s hit
list, too. Men and women who are unmarried or unrelated are forbidden to
walk down a street together or even to sit beside each other on a bus.

The national political discourse has been so unremittingly dreary in recent months that I was delighted to find this video today. It recycles some familiar material in a refreshing way. (And it reminds me that I'm looking forward to the next season of Mad Men).

The inconspicuous devices are sometimes installed at fixed points, as
the DEA has been doing in several border states, but they’re most often
mounted on local police cruisers, where they automatically scan and
record every license plate that comes within range of their optical
sensor.

When they pass an LPR-equipped police car, drivers both
innocent and guilty have their whereabouts recorded and tagged with GPS
coordinates, along with a color photo and a time stamp. The resulting
information is often kept for years, allowing law enforcement to engage
in a kind of retroactive surveillance to find out who was where, and at
what time.

The data is collected and accessed without the need for
warrants or probable cause, because courts have so far held that a
license plate – which, after all, is posted very clearly on every
driver’s bumper – can’t be considered private information. Privacy
advocates think the courts may reevaluate that stance, as LPR systems
become so widespread that they allow for tracking on a massive scale.

There's discussion at the link as to whether or to what extent this is an invasion of privacy. For the cell phone, see Cory Doctorow's post at BoingBoing:

Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls. It’s sad, but
it’s true. Which means software solutions don’t always matter. You can
have a secure set of tools on your phone, but it doesn’t change the fact
that your phone tracks everywhere you go. And the police can
potentially push updates onto your phone that backdoor it and allow it
to be turned into a microphone remotely, and do other stuff like that.
The police can identify everybody at a protest by bringing in a device
called an IMSI catcher. It’s a fake cell phone tower that can be built
for 1500 bucks. And once nearby, everybody’s cell phones will
automatically jump onto the tower, and if the phone’s unique identifier
is exposed, all the police have to do is go to the phone company and ask
for their information...

...remember that whatever governments can do with technology, organized
criminals can do too (this is doubly true of back-doors that governments
mandate in telecoms equipment and software to make spying easier --
they can be used by anyone, not just "good guys").

...the colleges of Carleton and St. Olaf held the first NCAA-sanctioned
metric football game. The “Liter Bowl,” played on September 17, 1977,
featured a gridiron measuring 100 meters (109.36 yards) long and 50
meters (54.68 yards) wide. The expanded dimensions favored St. Olaf’s
outside running game. The Oles ended up winning the contest—which was
supposed to be a game of centimeters—by a score of 43-0.

On its Centennial, the Republican Party
again calls to the minds of all Americans the great truth first spoken
by Abraham Lincoln: "The legitimate object of Government is to do for a
community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at
all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and
individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as
well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere."

Our
great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all
those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those
things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form
of government, be conservative."

While jealously guarding the
free institutions and preserving the principles upon which our Republic
was founded and has flourished, the purpose of the Republican Party is
to establish and maintain a peaceful world and build at home a dynamic
prosperity in which every citizen fairly shares.

We shall ever
build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction
because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free
land.

We believe that basic to governmental integrity are
unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by
all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as
an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to
root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.

We are
proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in
matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened
coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health
protection for all our people. We are determined that our government
remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of
our people.

To these beliefs we commit ourselves as we present this record and declare our goals for the future.

18 September 2012

Four words on a previously unknown papyrus fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, Harvard Professor Karen King told the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies today.

King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the existence of the ancient text at the congress’ meeting, held every four years and hosted this year by the Vatican’s Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome. The four words that appear on the fragment translate to “Jesus said to them, my wife.” The words, written in Coptic, a language of Egyptian Christians, are on a papyrus fragment of about one and a half inches by three inches.

“Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim,” King said. “This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’ death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions.”..

The gospel of which the fragment is but a small part, which King and Luijendijk have named the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife for reference purposes, was probably originally written in Greek, the two professors said, and only later translated into Coptic for use among congregations of Coptic-speaking Christians. King dated the time it was written to the second half of the second century because it shows close connections to other newly discovered gospels written at that time, especially the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip...

“The discovery of this new gospel,” King said, “offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus’ marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise.”

More at the link, where there is also a video of Karen King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, discussing the authenticity and interpretation of the papyrus fragment.

Update: Additional information from 2014 suggests that the document is not a modern forgery (It could, however, still be an 8th century forgery). Additional commentary (and a video) here.

Second update: More evidence that the artifact is a forgery:

Having evaluated the evidence, many specialists in ancient manuscripts
and Christian origins think Karen King and the Harvard Divinity School
were the victims of an elaborate ruse... "Two factors immediately indicated that this was a forgery," Mr.
Askeland tells me. "First, the fragment shared the same line breaks as
the 1924 publication. Second, the fragment contained a peculiar dialect
of Coptic called Lycopolitan, which fell out of use during or before the
sixth century." Ms. King had done two radiometric tests, he noted, and
"concluded that the papyrus plants used for this fragment had been
harvested in the seventh to ninth centuries." In other words, the fragment that came from the same material as the "Jesus' wife" fragment was written in a dialect that didn't exist when the papyrus it appears on was made.

Third update:
The December 2014 issue of The Atlantic contains a well-written article on The Curious Case of Jesus's Wife (concluding that it's probably a forgery.)

DEFIANCE, Ohio
- Karl Kissner picked up a soot-covered cardboard box that had been
under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather's attic. Taking a look
inside, he saw hundreds of baseball cards bundled with twine. They were
smaller than the ones he was used to seeing...

The cards are from an extremely rare series issued around 1910. Up to
now, the few known to exist were in so-so condition at best, with faded
images and worn edges. But the ones from the attic in the town of
Defiance are nearly pristine, untouched for more than a century. The
colors are vibrant, the borders crisp and white...

The best of the bunch — 37 cards — are expected to bring a total of
$500,000 when they are sold at auction in August during the National
Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore. There are about 700 cards in
all that could be worth up to $3 million, experts say. They include such
legends as Christy Mathewson and Connie Mack.

Kissner and his family say the cards belonged to their grandfather,
Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. Hench ran a meat market in Defiance,
and the family suspects he got them as a promotional item from a candy
company that distributed them with caramels. They think he gave some
away and kept others...

The Hench family is evenly dividing the cards and the money among the 20
cousins named in their aunt's will. All but a few have decided to sell
their share.

Pretty good video at the link. Presumably some of these have been sold by now, but I haven't seen the report.

Informed readers are aware that the U.S. is facing a "fiscal cliff." It has been more alluded to than specifically discussed in the broadcast media, but there is a detailed explanation at (where else?) Wikipedia. For today, I'll just offer some excerpts from a nice summary at The Guardian:

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a man of endless accommodation, drew a hard line under the one thing he could not do to save the US economy. Bernanke told the press:

"If the 'fiscal cliff' isn't addressed … I don't think our tools are strong enough to offset the effects of a major fiscal shock."

The warning was clear: a "fiscal cliff" could cause the Lehman moment of all Lehman moments. It didn't even send a ripple through Washington. Congress went on campaigning and strategizing over election-year politics. They've heard it before. Nothing will be done until after the election. And when something is done, it will be done at the last minute, in the latest custom of these economic disputes...

Here's what to expect: shortly after 1 January, unless Congress
intervenes beforehand, we'll see two things happen: $100bn of automatic
spending cuts, along with the demise of a batch of tax cuts that have
been a crutch for the weak economy – the Bush-era tax cuts that have
kept taxes low for eight years; and Obama's 2% payroll-tax holiday....

Each of these separately – tax hikes or spending cuts – would not be
enough to dent the US economy by much. But together, the spending cuts
and the tax hikes are enormous. The Committee for a Responsible Federal
Budget and the Congressional Budget Office both expect that a recession
would immediately follow if Congress does not address the fiscal cliff.

The
spending cuts, for instance, will add up to $100bn pulled out of the
economy by the government, in everything from the defense budget to
Medicare. The idea is to reduce the federal deficit by $1tn over 10
years. The tax hikes will return tax rates to what they were before
2003, which means the top tax rate for households could be over 39%,
according to press reports.

There are two tricky things about fixing this particular problem. The
first is the politics. Everyone in Congress knows this will be a
hard-fought battle, and they're happy to put it off.

Say no more. Congress and the President haven't done diddly-shit about this and obviously won't until after the election in Novermber, because nothing they do will please everyone, and they all want to get re-elected. They are just kicking the can down the *%#@ road.

But here's some additional insight from the article:

The question is whether it's already here. There's reason to
believe that Congress's delay in addressing the fiscal cliff has
already had a psychological effect on corporate America. A group of economists told the Wall Street Journal that is exactly what is happening:
They blame our lackluster recovery this year on a pullback in spending
and investment by US companies, which are afraid that the fallout from a
fiscal cliff could compromise their ability to find funding or function
normally. They've been preparing by essentially rolling into the fetal
position in preparation.

Meet Duchess, one of many dogs included in the annual Pet Stylist Super
Show in Knoxville, Tenn. The highlight of the event is the Creative
Grooming competition, where owners use nontoxic dyes to "design" their
pets. Duchess will be transformed into a member of the Queens Court from
"Alice in Wonderland."

Sami Stanley works on her standard poodle, which has a dragon sculptured
on one side and a jumping gold fish on the other. She calls it a Zen
poodle.

When i create posts about dog grooming (Aug 2009, Oct 2011), I have to restrain myself from offering disparaging comments. I am reminded by a variety of readers that these people love their dogs, and the dogs love the attention.So I'll just post the pix and let the res loquitur for ipse.

There are additional examples of artistically enhanced dogs in a photoessay at ABC News. Both of the above photos credit Meredith Frost/ABC News, via the always interesting Rue The Day.

It's not as simple as some would suggest. Here are some excerpts from a column at Salon written by an Anglican bishop:

Some people would have you believe that marriage began with Adam and
Eve. But in the account in Genesis where Adam and Eve become one flesh
(presumably through their mutual commitment and sexual intimacy), there
is no mention of an “institution” of marriage nor any liturgy, vows,
promises or other ritual used to solemnize their relationship. This
prehistorical account can only serve as a backdrop to the meaning (not
the “institution”) of marriage that developed over time.

The fact of the matter is, marriage has not been consistent
or unchanging over time. Indeed, even in biblical times, we see a
constant evolution in the practice of marriage. One man and one woman,
united in marriage for life, mutually exclusive and “faithful” sexually,
and joined because of their love for each other, is a relatively modern
notion of marriage. Such was not the case in ancient times.

From the earliest Old Testament accounts, polygamy seemed to be the
practice of the day. Or, to be more accurate, polygyny (the practice of
polygamy by males, not females) was practiced. In the ancient Hebrew
culture, having more than one wife was commonplace. In addition to
multiple wives, men who were wealthy enough to have slaves or concubines
had sexual relationships with them. Even Abraham — father to Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity — when he was unable to produce an heir with his
wife, Sarah, had a son by his slave Hagar. Abraham’s grandson Jacob
married two sisters, Leah and Rachel. King Solomon was renowned not only
for his wisdom and wealth but also for his 700 wives and 300
concubines! Over the years, marriage customs evolved, and by Jesus’ time
divorce was discouraged and monogamy increasingly became the standard...

Jesus is quite clear that marriage is to be for a lifetime and that
divorce is a serious issue, permitted to a man only in the case of
“unchastity.” For either a man or a woman to marry anyone after divorce
(“except on the ground of unchastity”), Jesus tells his disciples, is to
commit “adultery” (Matthew 19:9; 5:31– 32; Mark 10:11– 12; Luke 16:18)...

More re biblical marriage and the subsequent evolution of the concept at the Salon link.

One suggestion for the origin of the term was the French phrase jeune d'Anvers ('young [person] of Antwerp'). British sailors "cockneyed" this description into the personal name "Jenny Hanvers."..

For centuries, sailors sat on the Antwerp docks and carved these
"mermaids" out of dried skates. They then preserved them further with a
coat of varnish. They supported themselves by selling their artistic
creations to working sailors as well as to tourists visiting the docks. Jenny Hanivers have been created to look like devils, angels and dragons...

The earliest known picture of a Jenny Haniver appeared in Konrad Gesner's Historia Animalium vol. IV
in 1558. Gesner warned that these were merely disfigured rays, and
should not be believed to be miniature dragons or monsters, which was a
popular misconception at the time.

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends,
they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent
engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be
enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves
the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which
have lifted them to unjust dominion."

-- Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796

"As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear."

This mosaic image shows spherules,
or 'blueberries,' partly embedded and spread over the soil on Mars. The
image is from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at Meridiani
Planum. The image is a mosaic of three separate images; each image is
approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch) across. (Image courtesy NASA/JPL/Cornell
University.)

They may be markers of former life on Mars.

One such tantalising hint was discovered by the NASA Opportunity Rover,
which found small spherical hematite balls, dubbed ‘blueberries,’ in the
Martian soil...

On Earth, such spherical iron-oxide concretions are commonly found on
beaches and deserts around the world. Similar examples to those
discovered on Mars have been found in the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone near
the Colorado River, Utah, where the concretions range in size from
small marbles to cannonballs and consist of a hard shell of iron oxide
surrounding a softer sandy interior...

I think a good point is made in a Salon op-ed piece entitled "Stop calling student loans 'financial aid'."

The government records and documents student loans as a form of aid... When
pundits say that “student aid” has exploded over the past decade and
argue that aid is driving increases in tuition, it disguises that the
“aid” which has exploded is a signficant amount of debt for young people...

Student loans are an economic transaction, the same as if the government
had contracted out to build a bridge or hired a person to serve in the
military or police force or be a teacher. The money spent here isn’t
“aid.”

If loans are forgiven, or provided at sub-market rates or with interest-free deferrals of paybakcs, then they can be described as gifts or aid. Otherwise, they are just loans.

The photo represents the mouth of the river falling into the ocean [in Iceland].

“A little bit upstream there is a yellow-colored brook flowing into
the river, but yellow currents fail to mix with the main water flow.
One can estimate the scale judging by the car tracks that are clearly
seen on the black sand. This is just a river, just a volcano, just our
planet.”

An original source link is unfortunately not provided at the allhomosapienswelcome via, but the photographer is identified as Andre Ermolaev.

15 September 2012

These details from the imgur posting (embed cropped from original) and Reddit thread:

"My co-worker sent an email saying he would be late because he was trying to untie a squirrel tail knot. I asked for a picture, and he delivered... This is the email he sent:

I was pressed into squirrel rescue this morning on my way out. Five young squirrels got tangled in Christmas lights in my neighbor’s yard. We got the lights off, but now their tails are one big knot, so I have to bring them into a rescue place to untie them, as I am unequipped to untie squirrel tail knots. I should be in this afternoon.

Some readers of this blog will remember my January repost from 2008: A "rat king" - and three bucks. Rat kings have been presumed to be mostly apochryphal, but the Reddit thread included a link to a most-interesting article at Messinger Woods Wildlife Care and Education Center:

In the wild, squirrels make their nests of dried leaves and branches... A strange natural accident that sometimes occurs is sap from pine branches that the nest is constructed of can adhere to the squirrels' tails and ultimately to each other's tails. Squirrels normally have litters of 4 to 6 babies. As they are fed in the nest, they are quite "squirmy" and move around frequently. Once their tails become stuck together, movement is limited amongst them and they jump under and over each other trying to reposition themselves. In the process, they literally knot or braid themselves together. The squirrels pull in many directions, thereby worsening the situation. They can actually live quite a long time like this, as the mother continues to feed them.

The article continues with detailed directions on how to cope with a squirrel king if you encounter one, and how the victims can be untangled.

The no-huddle offense has created plenty of problems for defenses, initially at the collegiate level and now in the NFL. But as the WSJ reports, the tactic is also creating problems for television broadcasters:

Last week, 14% of NFL plays were run without a huddle, an increase of 56% from last season and 100% from five seasons ago.
As you might imagine, these up-tempo drives can put a fair bit of pressure on the TV production crew...

Veteran broadcaster Marv Albert, who now calls NFL games for CBS,
explained that the problem starts from the first play. If the team
starts no-huddle on the first drive, the broadcast doesn't even have
time to show the team's lineups. "And once you look down for an anecdote
you're dead," Albert said. He added that when a team like New England
is playing, he lives by a simple rule: "Don't talk about anything other
than the play at hand, or you are going to miss snaps."...

During a Patriots game last fall against the Dallas Cowboys, the
Patriots ran their offense so quickly that at one point in the third
quarter, 10 plays went by without a replay. "When you're calling a
Patriots game you cannot rest," Albert said.

Brian Billick, a former Ravens coach who is an analyst for Fox, said
it's often nearly impossible to get even the shortest opinion across:
"It's tight enough as it is, you only have 10-15 seconds to make a point
and now you don't even have that."

Made out of pre-cast concrete modules, the cave is about 24 metres
long. That size space could easily accommodate 200,000 bats. "But I'd be
happy with 10,000 to 15,000," Holliday said.

The cave was
engineered to draw a continual supply of winter air from a concrete
shaft to provide the chilly temperatures favoured by hibernating bats.
Stale air is released through a chimney. The shaft also serves as the
entrance for the bats.

The ceiling is scored with ridges and rough
edges, the better to give bat claws a tight grip. Walls are lined with
sheets of open mesh and fine screens – even a slab of board, with a gap
for crevice-loving bats to roost in...

But there are no guarantees the bats will even deign to use the artificial space. "It's
a neat idea for sure but the trick will be seeing whether bats will use
it first of all. The second thing will be seeing how they regulate the
micro-climate inside, which is super-important for bat hibernation,"
said Craig Willis, a bat expert at the University of Winnipeg.

14 September 2012

After seeing this photo at Uncertain Times, I had to look up "finger stall" - didn't know it was a synonym for "finger cot." This one, currently in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is made of sheet gold and comes from a royal tomb in Upper Egypt (ca. 1479–1425 B.C.), where they are described as "standard elements" of a royal burial (on all fingers and toes).

I presume this was done to cover up the fact that postmortem shrinkage gives most digits a unattractive claw-like appearance.

The scale at the top is in mm, and the material is starch rather than basalt.

Found all over the world, [similar geologic formations] are now known to be the result of cooling lava flows, in which shrinkage causes stresses that fracture the rock. The columns are formed as a sharp front of cooling moves into the lava flow, assisted by the boiling off of groundwater. As the front advances, it leaves behind a crack network which evolves into an almost hexagonal arrangement. This network carves out the columns. There are many mysteries: what causes the ordering of the network into hexagons? What sets the size of the columns, which varies in different outcrops between a few inches and a few yards?

Amazingly, you can make columnar joints in your kitchen! Just mix 50:50 corn starch and water and put it into a coffee cup. Dry the mixture with a bright light above it --- this might take up to a week. When the mixture is dry, carefully break it apart and you will see that the interior is broken up into small “starch columns” a few mm wide [pix at the link]. In this experiment, water replaces the heat in the lava, and the columns are 1000X smaller.

I have seen many of these popping up in the woods on rotting wood in recent weeks, but none as big as this immense one photographed by Judith Huf at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

10 September 2012

"The earliest evidence of ancient dentistry we have is
an amazingly detailed dental work on a mummy from ancient Egypt that
archaeologists have dated to 2000 BCE. The work shows intricate gold
work around the teeth. This mummy was found with two donor teeth that
had holes drilled into them. Wires were strung through the holes and
then around the neighboring teeth."

Earth's icy skull cap, floating atop the Arctic Ocean,
has reached its lowest summer extent since satellites first began keep
in track in 1979, and by some estimates its lowest reach in nearly 1,500
years...

Indeed, the ice hit hardest by the long-term decline is the thick ice
that once survived several years of thaw and freeze. With more of the
Arctic Ocean starting the freeze season as open water, an increasing
proportion of winter ice heading into the melt season is relatively thin
– more vulnerable to wind-driven break-up when the melt season returns,
which can speed melting...

The decline coincides with warming at the top of the world that has been
occurring twice as fast there as it has for the northern hemisphere as a
whole as the global climate warms. This so-called Arctic amplification increases the likelihood of severe
weather at mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, where most people
live, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Geophysical Research Letters...

As the temperature difference shrinks, the jet stream's speed slows and
the north-south meanders it makes as it snakes from west to east grow
longer. Both changes slow the jet stream's pace, contributing to the
blocking patterns that lead to persistent bouts of heat, cold, or
precipitation...

The jet streams' elongated meanders can bring one storm after another to
parts of the continent while keeping other parts relatively storm-free.
And the slowdown in the jet stream's migration across the hemisphere
sets up the blocking patterns that can hold those conditions in place
for weeks.

More at the links, which I found at Paul Douglas' incomparable On Weather blog.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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